The biggest mistake of the EU has been accepting too many countries in, not too few.
For an Europeanist it's desperating to see how the UK (now to be gone) and Eastern European countries have always blocked policies of further integration.
If Turkey were in and with veto power, the EU would be able to do practically nothing, as the cultural and political differences are huge. The EU would probably be on the verge of breaking up now, or would have already broken up at the Greek crisis.
And the story of the "moderate" Erdogan turning an authoritarian dictator after being "humiliated" sounds extremely naive to me. The things he is doing are not the work of a humiliated moderate. They are the work of an authoritarian for whom the alleged humiliation was a very convenient excuse to stop pretending to be a moderate.
Depends on where you put your counterfactuals. It is true that once countries are in the EU, the EU has almost no leverage. That happened with Bulgaria and Rumania.
If you imagine a world where Turkey was in the EU, you might as well through in some mechanisms for more leverage on existing members?
For an Europeanist it's desperating to see how the UK (now to be gone) and Eastern European countries have always blocked policies of further integration.
If Turkey were in and with veto power, the EU would be able to do practically nothing, as the cultural and political differences are huge. The EU would probably be on the verge of breaking up now, or would have already broken up at the Greek crisis.
And the story of the "moderate" Erdogan turning an authoritarian dictator after being "humiliated" sounds extremely naive to me. The things he is doing are not the work of a humiliated moderate. They are the work of an authoritarian for whom the alleged humiliation was a very convenient excuse to stop pretending to be a moderate.